Traditional boot camp is often described as a mildly traumatic experience intended to produce a bond by shared experience. The “Art Boot Camp” model, while certainly tongue-in-cheek, was very much about learning to endure and persevere in an unusual, challenging group situation. Our philosophy was decidedly anti-military, but wholeheartedly pro-rigor, pro-camaraderie, and pro-lunacy. Enlistees learned new artistic skills, but more importantly, learned how to use these skills with imagination, energy and intelligence.

Art Boot Camp was originally a one-week, 40-hour Spring Elective. The structure for the 40 hours was unique: First there were two standard 8-hour days of field trips and art journal projects, to fill enlistees with inspiration, collect evidence, and create a sense of their local artistic, cultural legacy through immersion, and through exploration. The remaining 24 hours were spent in a non-stop, no-sleep-allowed, art-making marathon, from 10 am straight through to 10 am.

As group identity was crucial, Boot Camp enlistees decided on their own daily uniforms and themes (“Beatniks”, “Sock Puppets”, “Pirates,” etc). They made up their own chants, and were drilled in new art skills. During the Marathon, they were expected to keep each other going the entire night. Around 4 am, the delirium and despair would often set in, and it would have been impossible to make it through without the support of fellow enlistees.

If enlistees proved that they were tough enough, and committed enough, to survive Art Boot Camp, they were promoted, in a special ceremony, to the rank of “Corporals,” and presented with a sliver of old boot or scrap of pirate flag cloth.

As members of a shrinking population of SF kids, this is their Bay Area and their creative legacy, and as the next generation, they have the power to continue to shape this legacy. Building and strengthening one’s creative gifts is a source of power. Learning discipline, hard work and structure is a source of power. Being able to think creatively is a source of power. Having a sense of humor is a source of power. In Art Boot Camp, this power manifested in a little whining, excessive laughter, intense work, great morale and serious bonds. Several Corporals have even returned to subsequent Boot Camps to break in the new recruits. I’m still in touch with an unusual number of Boot Camp veterans to this day.